


Anar ar' Ithil

by WitchofVoid



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Canon Trans Character, Gen, Minor Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Prostitution, will add tags if they come up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-11-28 15:53:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11421237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WitchofVoid/pseuds/WitchofVoid
Summary: Two elves travel together in a world where they are outcast, but never alone.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Quick note here, to avoid confusion, I'm going under the assumption that Taako and Lup had different names before they turned a hundred. Ithil is Taako, and Anar is Lup. 
> 
> Fun Fact: "Ithil" is Elvish for moon, and "Anar" is Elvish for sun!

Ithil’s aunt was the only family, besides his sister, that he ever knew and loved.

For years, the twins were passed between varying family members, who all only kept them at arm’s length, never staying with anyone longer than they were willing to take care of them for before they were dumped on someone else. Ithil couldn’t even remember his own mother’s face, only existing as a distant blur in his mind. He never knew why she left him and Anar, why she didn’t want them, why any of his family didn’t want them.

His Auntie Tilla was different.

She took them in when they were eight years old, and she was the first and only person who intended on keeping them. She lived in a small house on the distant outskirts of a port city, and the scent of warm spices and freshly-baked bread clung to her clothing from the bakery she worked at during the day. In the late afternoon, she’d come home and start dinner, and she beamed when Ithil and Anar asked one day if she would teach them how to cook.

She taught them everything she knew. How to chop vegetables, dice meat, fold pastries, decide which spices to use. How to make soul-warming soups, flavorful roasts, pies with perfectly flaky crusts and sweet fruity filling, stews and bakes and puddings and everything in between. She teared up the first time the twins could cook something from memory, without her help, and she held them close, ruffled their hair and kissed their cheeks and told them how proud she was of them.

For the first time in their lives, Anar and Ithil had a home. Their Auntie Tilla was the only person who ever came close to loving them as much as they loved each other, and she did everything she could for them. She taught them how to sew simple stitches, how to light and stoke a fire, how to braid their hair into intricate patterns. She took them to a lake in a nearby forest early in the morning on special days to fish, and she showed them what plants were edible, which wild berries were good and which were poisonous. Anar and Ithil never doubted that she would always come home to them whenever she left the house.

Until she didn’t.

 

 

The suns were already setting, dark purple streaks coming through the windows, and there was no sign of her. Ithil knew that she should have already been back from work in the city a long time ago, but he swallowed his fear, convinced himself that she was just running late, that she got held up at the bakery for some reason, and he kept himself busy by peeling potatoes for soup. Anar looked equally as concerned, slicing carrots and onions next to him at the table, but neither brought up the subject, only making light banter as they worked on preparing dinner.

By the time night fell, the two were worried. They finished their soup and ate in silence, and it wasn’t until afterwards, when they sat in front of the fireplace while Ithil mended a tattered dress with a needle and thread and Anar flipped through an old book that it was broken.

“Anar, what do we do if Auntie Tilla doesn’t come back?” Ithil asked, pausing his needlework.

Anar looked up from her book. “She has to come back. She always does.”

“But what if she doesn’t?”

“Maybe...maybe if she isn’t back in the morning, we can go look for her,” Anar suggested.

Ithil felt unease at the prospect of going into the city by themselves, but he nodded. Eventually, the two went to bed, and they held each other a little tighter than usual as they fell into a restless meditation.

In the early hours of the morning, Ithil woke first, and poked and prodded his sister until she did the same. He looked over to their aunt’s bed, and found it empty. Dread built up in his heart as he checked the whole house, but she was nowhere to be found, and there were no signs that she had ever returned during the night.

Ithil couldn’t bear to think that their aunt would abandon them, like their mother had when they were too small to remember her, like so many other family members did. His hands shook as he tried to lace up his boots, and Anar noticed and knelt down to help him, trying her best to give him a reassuring smile. He managed to give her a small smile back, and the two left the house hand in hand, hoping to find their aunt at the city’s local bakery.

 

 

If only their aunt had taught them more Common.

If they understood more Common, they would have caught the floating words and bits of conversation as they walked through the oddly dull city square. Words like “a band of rogues”, and “no survivors”. They could have known before they made it to the other end of the city and saw the buildings reduced to rubble, the blood staining the dirt roads, the small groups of locals attempting to clean the mess.

Anar and Ithil ran to where the bakery used to be, searching the fallen building until Anar let out a scream upon sight of a familiar arm sticking out of a pile of wreckage. The twins dug through the debris to find the body of their aunt, damaged and lifeless. Tears welled up in Ithil’s eyes until they were streaming down his face as he sobbed brokenly, holding his Auntie Tilla’s hand up to his cheek, finding it had gone cold. Anar wrapped herself around him, wailing, and Ithil dropped his aunt’s hand to hug her, her shoulder muffling his cries.

The two were startled out of their misery when a voice rang out, and Ithil looked up to see a human man in the distance, walking in their direction. The two jumped up from the ground, and, panicked, grabbed each other’s hands and began to run. They ran until the man was out of sight, until they were out of the city, until they were left breathless and panting, kneeling over in a meadow where their house could be seen in the far distance.

When they caught their breath, Ithil teared up again, holding onto his sister like a lifeline. “Anar, what are we going to _do_?”

“I...I don’t know,” she said, her voice quivering.

“...What if somebody finds us and takes us to the orphanage?” Ithil remembered passing the building on the rare occasions when their aunt took them into the city to go to the marketplace, remembered the glum, downcast faces of the children. “I don’t want to go there.”

“Then we’ll have to leave.”

Ithil’s eyes widened. “But where will we go?”

“I don’t know!” She snapped, and immediately regretted it when her brother flinched. “I don’t know,” she said again, softly. “But we can’t stay here if we don’t want to be found.”

“...ok,” Ithil sniffled. “We’ll have to get our stuff though, before we can go.”

The two children trudged back to the house, and began to pack their few belongings into rucksacks. Ithil swept the kitchen, taking leftover food and a few knives. He paused when he passed his aunt’s apron, still hanging on the wall by a peg. He took it in his hands and brushed his face against it, catching the faint scent of warm spices.

He knew he didn’t have time to be sad, but he lingered on the apron until he felt Anar’s hand on his shoulder. She pulled him away to sit around the hearth with her, and they braided each other’s hair in silence.

When they opened the door of their aunt’s house and stepped outside, it was with a sense of finality. They knew that they would likely never return, and they walked off together, hand in hand, into the unknown, with eyes still red from crying and hearts filled with grief, unaware that this would be the beginning of a long life on the road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please tell me if there are any glaring grammatical errors, please and thank ya.


	2. Chapter 2

Two days passed, and Ithil realized he had no idea where they were going.

They left in the direction of the neighboring forest, too frightened to take the dirt roads that ran out of the city. They walked for hours, far, far past the area they recognized. When night fell, they rested in shifts, taking turns keeping watch and sitting up against a tree for support, and using each other’s laps as makeshift pillows.

By the second night, when the suns had almost finished setting, Ithil was tired. His clothing and boots were smudged with dirt, and he had scratches on his arms from accidentally hitting branches, and he was sick of all the walking.

He announced it by suddenly stopping and flopping down onto the grass on his backside, throwing his arms up dramatically. “I’m done. I don’t want to move anymore. I refuse.”

Anar stared down at his face from above, crossing her arms. “We can’t stop now, there’s still some sunlight left. I know we can see in the dark, but still.”

“We don’t even know where we’re going!” Ithil huffed. He hauled himself up from the ground, pulling his knees to his chest with his arms.

“...I want Auntie Tilla,” he said quietly, a few tears pooling down his cheeks.

Anar sunk to the ground next to him. “I want her too,” she half-whispered, wiping away the dampness from her own eyes. “But...but she’s gone, and we have to take care of ourselves now. It’s what-It’s what she would have wanted us to do.”

“I know, but it’s so hard and I-” Ithil paused, tilting an ear towards his left. “...Do you hear something?”

Anar flicked an ear back as well. It sounded like…distant voices. Multiple ones. Anar stood up slowly and helped Ithil to his feet, and the two crept softly towards the noise, until they could see a gleam of orange through the trees. They edged closer, careful to avoid stepping on any twigs, and stopped when the forest ended, ducking behind a row of bushes and peering out.

Four people- all human- sat around a glowing fire, talking and laughing with each other. A kettle of what appeared to be soup cooked above the fire, attached to a roasting spit. A few feet away stood a large caravan parked off to the side of a dirt road, drawn by brown horses. From their hiding place, Ithil could see a few instruments poking out of their bags, and he guessed they were travelling performers.

Ithil remembered what his aunt had always told him about humans. “ _There are bad humans out there, Ithil,_ ” she said one evening long ago as she held him close, stroking his hair. “ _They’ll be mean to you because you’re an elf. They’ll pull on your ears, or they’ll want to take you away because you’re pretty. They die in a blink of an eye, so it’s pointless to get close to them. Promise me you won’t go near them if you can help it, dear._ ”

Ithil started to walk away, but Anar grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?” She whispered, and Ithil stared at her as if she had grown horns.

“They’re humans!” He whispered back. “We should leave before they notice us!”

“Are you kidding? This could be a chance for us.” Anar looked back out at the caravan, and her gaze fell on the pot of soup.

“I have an idea,” she murmured. “Follow my lead.” And before Ithil could protest, she pulled on his hand and dragged him out into the clearing with her.

Four pairs of eyes turned to the two and stared in confusion. “Hell-o!” Anar said, waving at the group.

A tall man with a shaggy brown beard stood up and said something, presumably in Common, that Ithil couldn’t understand.

“Anar,” Anar pointed at herself, and then to her brother. “Ithil. We...food?” She tried.

A woman with curly blonde hair whispered something to the bearded man, and he pulled a few bowls out of a bag on the ground, reaching for the ladle in the soup.

“No no no no,” Anar waved frantically, shaking her head. “We _food_.” And she pretended to stir an invisible pot. Ithil caught on and mimed using a rolling pin. “We food...you.” She pointed to the caravan. “Us...cart.”

Another woman with short hair and dark skin stood up and walked over to the twins, kneeling down slightly to face them. “ _Do you two speak Elvish?_ ”

Ithil noticed that her ears ended in small points, a half-elf, and he sighed in relief. “ _Yes,_ ” Anar replied. “ _We’ve been travelling by foot for a long time and we’re worn out. Can we ride with you? We know how to cook, we can be useful, I promise._ ”

“ _Where are your parents?_ ” The woman asked, looking concerned. _“Are you two by yourselves?_ ”

Ithil and Anar nodded.

The woman turned around to her companions, and they exchanged a few sentences. She turned to them again. “ _Show us what you can do_.”

And with that, the twins got to work. The bearded man handed Ithil a bowl, and he took a small amount of the soup and poured it with the ladle, taking a sip and passing it to Anar to do the same.

“ _Bland_ ,” Ithil said, and Anar nodded in agreement. The fourth human, a man with black hair and an oddly shaped nose, offered them a small bag. Ithil examined its’ contents, pulling out a few vegetables. He took a small knife and a handful of edible plants from his rucksack, and sliced them all into the pot. Anar threw spices in from a pouch from her own bag.

When they finished, Ithil and Anar passed bowls around to everyone, including two for them, and seated themselves around the fire and waited for everyone to take a mouthful.

Four pairs of eyes lit up upon tasting it, and Anar and Ithil had not only hitched a ride that night, but also found a way to survive.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick warning here this is the chapter where the attempted rape happens (it's relatively brief)

Ithil learns many things his first few years on the road. 

Most travelling adventurers and performers can’t cook for shit, for starters. Most of them also can’t speak Elvish, which proves to become a problem when trying to communicate with them. The process of learning Common is a slow one, without any proper teachers besides the people who shouted at them regularly in the caravans. Ithil and Anar learn enough at least to follow orders at first, and they also learn fun words like ‘fuckface’, and ‘dickhead’, and ‘asshole’, swears that they definitely would have gotten in trouble for saying the Elvish equivalents of in their aunt’s house. 

They rarely ever get paid, but having a place to rest at night in return for keeping everyone fed is enough for Ithil and Anar to find new caravans to join when their current one is disbanded, or disliked enough for them to leave when the opportunity arises. Ithil learns that the world is an unfavorable place, and many of the people he comes across aren’t kind, but travelling with a group of unsavory musicians or brutish mercenaries for a short time gives him and his sister a chance to possibly come across some gold, which they save and use to buy new clothing when their own becomes too worn and ragged to wear anymore. 

It beats the times when they don’t have anywhere to go, when they’re left to fend for themselves in the streets. Ithil and Anar learn how to beg and steal and scrap to get by, and there are many times when they barely avoid getting caught, when they barely have enough food to stave off hunger pains, when they barely make it through the night of a bad storm. But they always manage to survive, to keep going, and they learn how to keep each other going, how to lift each other’s spirits when they’re flagging. They learn to be everything each other needs, and Ithil knows that, at the very least, he will never be alone. 

  
  


 

One of the hardest things Ithil learns is the reason why his aunt never let him and his sister roam by themselves.

Tilla was a very closed-off person. That was no secret to anyone who knew her, and it was a well-known fact to Ithil and Anar. She had people she worked with, people she saw often and made pleasant conversation with, but nobody she considered a friend. She was distrustful of most people, especially of humans, who were more prominent than any other race. She held Ithil and Anar’s hands tightly when they walked together through the marketplace, and always sternly told them to stay in the house when she left for work. She was hesitant to teach them Common, to give them a skill that would allow them to eventually go wherever they pleased, to speak with humans. 

Ithil didn’t understand why his aunt wanted to shelter them. He was mostly upset at the time that he and Anar couldn’t play outside during the day most of the time, when the suns were usually at their brightest. 

He supposes that he was lucky to have not understood.

Ithil notices quickly that he never sees another elven child his and Anar’s age, or any elven children, for that matter. The elves he comes across are adults who left their distant homelands to travel and quest in the mainlands, and the next closest thing he sees on occasion are half-elves, often the product of wandering male elf adventurers and human women. He wonders why he never sees young, full-blooded elves in the open. 

It becomes obvious to him, with the way people stare at him and his sister. 

Elves are a pretty race, with bright eyes and elegant frames and sharp, striking features. Ithil had always known this, and his aunt had warned him of the dangers in it. To others, elves were mysterious and alluring, radiating youth and magical essence. Especially young elves, who were a rarity in the mainlands. Very valuable rarities. 

Prizes. 

Ithil would catch people looking at him and Anar with a glint in their eyes that could only be described as  _ hunger _ . They’d turn away when he caught them staring, and he’d grip Anar’s hand tighter, walk faster, breathe a little heavier. He didn’t understand yet what the gazes desired, not as a twelve-year-old who had just begun to discover the world, but the stares haunted him, never leaving his mind. 

  
  


 

Ithil and Anar are fifteen years old when they join a caravan of circus performers.

The other members are friendly. They like the twins, greatly appreciating the change in food quality, and they easily take them in as two of their own. A wizard who does light shows lends them old magic books, teaches them simple spells like Prestidigitation and Dancing Lights, and Anar and Ithil spend their nights practicing eagerly, showing each other what they’ve learned and laughing when their spells go awry. 

The few months they spend with the group are pleasant. They watch the performances from the sidelines, and they get paid a small amount of gold every week. Ithil experiments more with his dishes, going beyond what his aunt had taught him more than three years prior. He learns how to make new things, and the caravan members are helpful, telling him what they like and what they dislike. He values their opinions. He feels as though he could consider these people friends. 

He becomes so comfortable that he doesn’t notice the way the caravan owner watches him when he isn’t looking. He’s a large man, bigger than most humans Ithil has met, and he thinks he may be a half-orc, but he’s nice enough to him and his sister that he doesn’t seem like a threat. He doesn’t think anything of the frequent casual touches, the hand on his shoulder that lingers a little longer than it should. He doesn’t notice his attempts to get him or Anar by themselves.

One afternoon, Ithil found himself alone. The other caravan members were off exploring the city they had just arrived on the outskirts of, in search of supplies to fix costumes with or magical components needed for their next big show. Ithil noticed he was missing a few key ingredients they needed for that night’s planned dinner, and Anar offered to go fetch them in the city while he worked on what they had already in the caravan’s kitchen. He agreed warily, figuring it was ok if they were only apart for a little while. She left, and Ithil busied himself with peeling potatoes.

He was so preoccupied with his task that he didn’t notice the caravan owner slink up to him from behind, and he shrieked when he was lifted off the floor and rammed into the wall. His wrists were pinned above his head with one hand, and another slapped across his mouth, muffling his cries. He flailed, trying to break free, but his aggressor was much larger than him, much stronger, and he went limp in his grasp. 

He found himself staring into a pair of eyes that glinted with the same predatory hunger he had seen before.

“That’s right...you don’t struggle or make noise, and this will be a lot easier for the both of us.” And the hand covering his mouth was removed, only to be replaced with a crushing pair of lips. It was rough and vulgar, and Ithil felt tears well up the same time he felt a hand creeping up his skirt…

The fireball came out of nowhere, and it collided with the caravan owner’s back, causing him to fall over and howl in pain, leaving Ithil to drop to the floor. He saw his sister standing in the entryway, with a raised, poorly-carved wand gripped in a shaking hand, an expression of sheer rage on her face. Ithil quickly rose and raced to her, and they jumped out of the caravan with smoke billowing from its windows, running without even realizing that they left their bags behind. 

They ran until they were far, far away from the caravan. And then Ithil collapsed into Anar, and she held him while he sobbed, gently petting his hair. He could still taste his assailant in his mouth, could feel the dark bruises blossoming on his wrists. They take days to fully heal and disappear. 

The most important thing Ithil learns in his first few years is that he can trust no one but his sister. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting this at 1 am and I haven't had it proofread so please tell me if there are errors I need to fix please and thank ya very much <3


	4. Chapter 4

_ “I don’t want to be a boy,” Anar told Ithil when they were seven years old, lying on a grassy hilltop during midsummer. Their cousin was in the distance, paying them little attention as she weeded a garden. She didn’t like them very much, and they didn’t really care for her either. “It just doesn’t feel right.” _

_ “Why don’t you try being a girl?” he suggested, idly picking apart a dandelion.  _

_ “That’s a great idea! Thank you Ithil!” Anar squealed, rolling over to hug her brother tightly. “From now on, I’m a girl!” _

_ “We should make you look like one too. Follow me, I know what we should do!” Ithil tugged on her hand, pulling her up off the ground with him and leading her back to their cousin’s house, ripping up a handful of dandelions on the way. _

_ They snuck into their cousin’s bedroom and rifled through her closet, pulling out a pile of dresses that unceremoniously fell on top of them. After raiding her vanity for supplies, Ithil got to work smearing makeup on Anar’s face with his hands. When he finished and admired his job, he asked her to do the same for him, because he wanted to be pretty too, and together they made a mess of the bedroom, leaving behind a trail of discarded clothing and powder.  _

_ When their cousin found them later, her shock quickly turned into laughter at the sight before her. Anar and Ithil were wearing dresses far too big for them, and one of Ithil’s sleeves had completely fallen off of his shoulder. The makeup caked on their faces was horrendous, both covered in powder with red smeared around their lips and uneven, bright blue painted on from their eyelids to above their eyebrows. Unmatched necklaces hung from their necks, and several dandelions were poorly woven into their hair.  _

_ Their cousin was angry about them playing in her bedroom, and she made them scrub their faces and the powder off of her floor, but Ithil had never seen Anar smile so wide. _

  
  


Since that day, Ithil had only ever known Anar as his sister. The fact that she had been born different was never something Ithil brought up or saw her differently for. To him, Anar was the only constant in his life, a ray of sunshine that countered the dreariness of the world that they had been born into together. All that mattered to him was that she was happy.

So he was saddened to see her become more discontented with her body as they matured. They grew at a slower rate than a human would, but over time they’d notice their increase in height and deepening voices. It was easier for Anar when they were younger. Most of the people they encountered thought they were both sisters, due to Ithil’s matching long hair and fondness for feminine clothing, and Ithil was fine with it. He found that people were nicer if they thought he was a girl anyway, and it meant that no one would question Anar. 

But they were changing as they aged, and Ithil hated to see his sister so disheartened, wishing there were curves where there weren’t any, disliking the way her voice had become lower. He tried to help her in any way he could, softening her features with cheap makeup, telling her when the rags stuffed in her chest looked off, but it never seemed like enough.

He just wished there was something more he could do for her.

  
  


Ithil and Anar are seventeen when they end up with a raucous trio of adventurers. 

They’re rowdy and reckless, and maybe do more harm than good, but they’re well-meaning, a group consisting of a wild halfling rogue, a grumpy dwarven cleric, and a half-elf wizard who takes a shine to the twins immediately. Ithil doesn’t trust any of these people, but the wizard provides an opportunity for him and Anar to have access to more learning materials for magic, and they’ll take whatever they can get. 

Ithil strolled up to Anar one day proudly waving a flask filled with glowing, teal-colored liquid. “Hey sis, check out what I just finished.” 

Anar watched as Ithil uncorked the flask and took a large sip. At first, nothing happened, but then the dark brown of Ithil’s hair began to drain away, and Anar watched in awe as the color slowly faded into the same dazzling teal as the liquid in the bottle. 

Anar whistled. “Dude, that’s amazing! Gimme some of that!” 

Ithil handed her the flask. “It’s a transmogrification potion. It’ll only work for an hour, but you can make it more potent to last longer. Only had enough components for the weakest one.”

“Impressive,” said another voice, and Ithil and Anar turned around to see Dexius - the wizard - watching Anar’s hair shift colors. He raised his hands and clapped, a big grin on his face, and that was when Ithil noticed the stones on the rings around his fingers shimmering with magical energy. 

“Hey Dexius, what do those rings do?” Ithil asked, pointing at them. “You wear them all the time, but you don’t really like jewelry that much.” 

The halfing rogue, Fenzana, always came back from a dungeon with plenty of jewelry looted from corpses she offered everyone before she pawned it off in busy towns or kept it for herself, but Dexius was never interested. Anar and Ithil were very interested. They had always loved shiny things they could never afford, admired the hoops and little jewels and chains that hung from the ears of passerby, and when Fenzana stole some dead goblin’s earrings, they hurried to find a needle. 

Anar promised to poke through on three, but she did it on one instead, and Ithil did  _ not _ appreciate it. 

Dexius paused for a moment, and then decided to sit on the edge of the caravan. “Well, you see...hm. How should I explain it? I was...not born the way I wanted to be. I felt like a man, but my body didn’t look the way I wanted it to. Does that make sense?”

Ithil glanced at Anar, who was scanning the wizard’s entire form with disbelief. “Really?”

“Really,” he nodded. “And when I got into wizardry, I discovered enchantments that could help me.” He gestured to the rings, each holding a different colored gemstone. “These are transmogrification rings. As long as I wear them, they change my body and keep it the way I want. They were quite expensive, but I’ve never felt better.”

“Do you know how to make them?” Anar asked, a spark of hope visibly lighting up within her. 

“Unfortunately not,” Dexius replied, and Anar deflated. “It isn’t within my magic specialty, I’m afraid.”

Later that night, Ithil caught Anar staring at the glimmering stones on Dexius’s fingers with dejected longing, and it hurt his heart. 

  
  


A few days later, everything goes to hell.

The band of criminal orcs the group was supposed to be searching for ends up ambushing their caravan in the middle of the day while they are in the middle of traveling through a forest, and the twins are barely able to flee and cling to each other from within a large clump of bushes. They are forced to watch Dexius’s body be pinned to a tree with a spear piercing through his gut and into the bark. They watch as a warhammer slams into the dwarven cleric’s head - Dolkohm - and crushes his skull, sending gore flying into the air. They don’t see where Fenzana went, and they assume she was able to escape. There’s a tense few minutes where the orcs linger in the area, and the twins wait until they are long gone to run in the opposite direction, past the burning caravan and the bloodied, dead horses on the ground. They’ve witnessed acts of violence before, but the images engraved in their minds aren’t quick to fade, and Ithil has to try to keep the bile in the back of his throat from surfacing.    
  
  


When the twins make it to the closest city and find a new caravan to join, Ithil begins a new project. 

 

 

Anar and Ithil didn’t know exactly when their birthday was. They only knew that they were born sometime in February, from what their different relatives remembered. Birthdays were something they couldn’t really afford to care about, not when survival was often their main priority, but when they could celebrate, they tried their best to make it special. 

Anar and Ithil decide to celebrate their twenty-first birthday in a room above a tavern. They had enough coins to afford an inn for a few nights to escape the bitter cold of winter, and they ate slightly stale bread for dinner, which they agreed was better than their recent fare. 

“Ok Ithil, you get your gift first,” Anar said, sitting next to Ithil on the room’s single bed. “Close your eyes and hold out your hands.”

Ithil shut his eyes and lifted his hands, and Anar dropped something into them. He opened his eyes to find a small cloth bag, and he loosened the string holding it closed until it opened and he found feathers, beads, and a smaller baggie of pearl-colored dust. Spell components. 

“Sorry it’s not that much…” 

“I love it sis, it’ll be real useful. Thank you” Ithil smiled and wrapped an arm around her, and then broke the embrace to reach into his own bag. “Your turn. Close those eyes, you’re gonna love this.” 

Anar squeezed her eyes shut and held out her hands, and Ithil placed his gift in her open palms.

When she opened her eyes, she gaped at the ring. It had a golden band and a ruby-colored stone in the center. Actually, it looked like a ring that Ithil owned. But the stone gleamed with arcana, and Anar slapped her free hand to her mouth. 

“Ithil...is this…?”

“A transmogrification ring? Sure is. Sorry it took me so long to get you one, these bitches aren’t exactly easy to make. Had to learn easier stuff first, and then it took me forever to get the enchantment right. It’ll, uh. It’ll give you...y’know....” Ithil made a vague gesture to his chest. “It won’t be that huge of a difference, but I tested it on myself, so it should work.”

“Ithil, I...thank you so much! I don’t even...just...” Anar quickly plucked the ring from her palm and stood up from the bed, carefully slipping it on her finger. The effects were almost instantaneous, and Anar used shaking hands to gently cup the unfamiliar weights on her chest.

“I’VE GOT TITTIES!”

If the entire tavern downstairs heard Anar scream, Ithil didn’t care. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my children thank you for reading if ya catch anything grammatically please tell me thank you so much I love you <3


End file.
